Greg Walden: with that i'll reserve my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from washington reserves the balance of his time. the gentleman from arizona. mr. grijalva: thank you, mr. speaker. reserve. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from arizona reserves his time. the gentleman from washington. mr. hastings: how much time on both sides, mr. speaker? the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from washington has 14 minutes rem. the gentleman from arizona has 10 1/2 minutes remaing. mr. hastings: i'm very pleased

Greg Walden: to yield to my friend from oregon as much consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from oregon is recognized. mr. walden: i thank the gentleman. i thank him for his leaderpship. i stand up today on this bill and i actually intend to support it because i think -- i may differ with my colleague from washington about some things, but the fundamental

Greg Walden: issue that i'm upset about is the notion that we can protect lands somehow by never doing anything again on them. and certainly there are areas, and i've supported some of these new wilderness designations, i have tried to do it in a bipartisan way and tried to help, but doggone it, there are a whole bunch of

Greg Walden: other lands, the majority of the lands, in o federal forested lands that are completely out of balance with nature. that cry out for good stewardship and balanced magement, and i washington never has to catch up to oregon when it comes to unemployment.

Greg Walden: and you get out in parts of my district in eastern oregon, and we are pushing 20% unemployment in county after county. and all too often the biggest economic activity that occurs in the summer is not the harvesting of dead trees, it's the making of lunches for firefighters.

Greg Walden: as catastrophic wildfire takes over. my colleague from oregon, mr. schrader, and i are working on legislation with others, mr. hastings and others, thawill allow us to go out into the forest and treat these lands. it is a crying shame and i think absolutely erroneous to argue that the only way you protect is to lock up and

Greg Walden: ignore. and this congress under democrat leadership, with the good chairman who took the gavel i used to have when i chaired the forest subcommittee, i hopewill actually give us a hearing on our legislation after it is introduced and will actually give it due consideration. as in give us a hearing, give us a markup, let us put it into law.

Greg Walden: let's take the healthy forest restoration act that passed in an overwhelming bipartisan manner in both houses of this congress and was signed into law in 2003, that has been very successful around our urban interface areas, the wildland urban interface, where we can go in and thin out the brush, work with the communities in collaboration and reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire.

Greg Walden: let's take those authorities that are now proven and workable and save taxpayers money because they are efficient, and expand those out so we can protect wattersds. so we can get ahead of these bug infestations that are killing off enormous swaths of federa and i don't sense the chairman,

Greg Walden: i'd love to know if he'll take this up, i don't believe he supported the healthy forest restoration act when it was before the house, but it just so frustrates the people i represent and others that we may argue over a river here, something there, meantime the whole forest is dying. not just in the northwest and

Greg Walden: on the east side pine forests, but you get in colorado and look at the damage there. members of both sides of the aisle in color called for special initiatives to allow thinning there to get ahead of that bug infestation that's killing the pine. you look frankly what's happened across the border in canada. these are enormous infestations . if you are concerned about

Greg Walden: climate change, you have to have understood if the temperature is rising, the forest can't keep pace with the change. and so if you want to do something to protect the forest for the future, then you need to thin them out now to be able to get ahead of of drought and further stress and further bug infestation. and in doing so, we can reduce

Greg Walden: the cost to the taxpayers because we'll get the forest back into balance and when they catch fire, it will burn naturally and actually be fine. by the way we can put people to work and that's what this ought to be about. this house should be addressing how you actually use the resources manageable, responsible way to

Greg Walden: put people back to work whether are you in john day or primeville or baker city, it's amazing the policies that have been put in place that restrict our access to our own forests, that even are so tight, so restrictive you can't even cut a burned dead tree while it

Greg Walden: still has value. and run it through a mill and make a productive wood out of it, lumber out of it. and no, we'd rather have some other country do that and then we'll import it. while our staff stands there and rots. by the way that becomes the breeding ground for the next expansion of some bug infestation that will take the next healthy forest.

Greg Walden: you dre around central oregon, tell me we couldn't have prevented the fire that destroyed things there. i can show you when the forest service was given the ability to thin before this enormous fire a couple years ago, the trees that they thinned around lived. where they were denied access to go in and do forest recovery work, it destroyed everything.

Greg Walden: they'll recover. none of us will probably be alive to see it. we might be. it shouldn't be that way. it doesn't have to be that way. and then so while we debate this bill here today on the mol alla river, there is a bigger issue we should be bringing to this floor.

Greg Walden: it is about how we are strussed with the stewardship of america's great forest,hose reserves setaside beginning in 1905 by theodore roosevelt, who by the way when he did that, said the great purpose of the forest reserves is first, water for agriculture, and second, me building. most people don't attribute

Greg Walden: that to theodore roosevelt. that's what it was for. obviously there are things we need to do in our forests for other purposes, but clearly protecting watersheds is an essential stewardship obligation that this congress for too long has not done enough to deal with. and part of it, sure, we can add more money here and there, and that can be good.

Greg Walden: we can debate how much. but the real issue is the underlying law that needs to be fixed. so there are forest managers, our trained professionals can go out and do what they were trained to do. can you imagine let's say if you were a veterinarian, i don't know if there's any on the floor, if were you a veterinarian and you had to go through the process a forester

Greg Walden: has to go through to treat an animal, you might as well shoot it in the head because it's never going to survive long enough to get the treatment you know you need to prescribe. let's be reasonable about these things. we have done it before in a bipartisan way. we can do it again before america's great forest reserves are -- go up in smoke and are destroyed. you go back to that colorado

Greg Walden: example and the hayman fire occurred, that whole watershed. the pictures of the mud coming into their drinking water and dead fish. we don't have to live that way. but simply making the argument is one -- as and -- one of my friends made, we are just behind the next state as how much they setaside and ignore

Greg Walden: is the wrong argument. i respectfully disagree with my friend from oregon who made that argument. i don't think that's the measurement of good stewardship. the asure is how you take care of it for the future. what you leave for the next generation. that doesn't mean you never tump it again. it means active management where it's appropriate.

Greg Walden: it means savings our -- saving our watersheds for all god's creature it means doing so we can figure out a way to turn biomas into energy and turn our natural resources into jobs. that's what we need.